The Difference Between Luck and Love
by Valieara
Summary: ... doesn't amount to much. Cam hesitates not before she decides to adopt Michelle, but before she decides to ask her. Brennan gives her another push in the right direction based on personal experience.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, FOX, Hart Hansen et al do; for fun, not profit; etc.

**Setting/Spoilers: **Season four's _Doctor in the Den. _Because I love Cam. And I love Brennan/Cam interaction. More, please.

**Notes: **I really did write this the day after the episode aired, but going through my Flashdrive of Fun Things I realized I never posted it. Here's hoping it's not too late.

oOo

Given what she knew about the woman, in hindsight she supposed she shouldn't have been as surprised that Dr. Brennan, of all people, gave her the nudge that brought her to this fork in the road. Cam had never seen the government files attached to Brennan's life, whether pertaining to her parents' disappearance or her stay in the foster system; and as much as she was curious, had never asked.

This wasn't confession, she reminded herself as she walked up to Brennan's open door. It wouldn't resolve in absolution; but she _needed_ this confirmation.

"I'm about to ask Michelle to live with me," she announced from the frame of Dr. Brennan's office. To-the-point and unpretentious, because by this point she knew Brennan appreciated it.

The other woman looked up and blinked, her face blank for a second and a half that told Cam she was processing and analyzing the statement for meaning and context, and casting stones for the correct response. Cam was gratified by the compromise: briskness for niceties, vague but willing stumbles in the dark. They were learning.

"That's wonderful," Brennan eventually replied. "Congratulations."

And it was awkward, much like most of her dealings with this woman; but Cam remembered her warm empathy and hand on hers not eight hours before, and pressed on.

"Actually," Cam spun, "that's not why I'm here."

Silent request met silent invitation, and Cam took a seat on the arm of Brennan's sofa, the full weight of the other doctor's uncanny eyes shifting to press on her very soul.

"You want to know what you're doing is the right thing," Brennan intuited after a moment. "That whatever judgments you make based on emotion and perception right now won't come back to haunt you."

"Yes," Cam confirmed. There wasn't much else to say to that; nothing she could express in words.

Brennan smiled, but it wasn't either the quick professional quirks or the shy pretty curving of the lips she reserved alike for both Angela and Booth. "I know I can come across as unfeeling or unemotional," she began, "or so I've been told. And while I don't believe that emotion is superfluous in making decisions on as a great a scale as this, I also believe there's a line between family and everything else."

"Michelle..." she struggled. "She said she had a cousin in Chicago, who might take her in."

Brennan shrugged. "I've said I had a grandfather. It didn't mean anything. There are helpful lies that simply ameliorate tension between foster children and everyone else who isn't a foster child. It's almost worse to be an unwanted obligation than simply unwanted."

Cam's eyes went wide. "Booth doesn't…" she asked, shaking her finger at the tacit question hanging between them.

"No," Brennan confirmed calmly, eyebrows knitted. "And I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him."

Her eyes said she'd tell Cam whatever she needed to know, or wanted to know. There was a cool and logical certainty behind them that chilled her to the bone; and she was suddenly certain that desperate logic – that desperation _for _logic – was born of her time in the system; and she didn't need to or want to know what had driven her to that point, that fork that allowed for either rationalization or insanity, and nothing in between.

Brennan didn't verbalize it, and eventually Cam looked away.

"A multiplicity of studies has been conducted on children's relations to caregivers who are not their biological parents," Brennan said more gently than Cam had ever heard her speak, and she looked back up. "I could quote the results and findings to you, but in this case, I honestly don't think it would inform your decision any further."

Cam breathed in, and shook her head slowly. "It wouldn't," she agreed. "Thank you, Dr. Brennan," she said as she rose to leave.

Brennan smiled – a pretty smile, now, if a little sad – and ducked her head as she also stood. Her eyes were warm as her hand caught Cam's elbow on the way out.

"For the record, Michelle will never reject you," she said, utterly serious. "No matter what you think, or she thinks, or either of you thinks the other thinks."

And it was awkward, but sincere, and Cam could see glimmers of something she couldn't quite make out.

Her "_How can you be so sure?"_ slipped out before she could censor it.

She never could forget that Dr. Brennan didn't believe in luck, if only because the other woman wouldn't let her forget it; but it was the same as her perpetual insistence that she didn't believe in love; and looking back, it was at that moment that she understood the bittersweet sincerity that accompanied all of her actions and the vulnerability that underlined them.

"Essentially, I was her," Brennan replied after a pause. "Only not as lucky.


End file.
